A Venezue­lan na­tion­al has been held at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port with US$69,000 strapped to her body.

The woman was at­tempt­ing to board a flight out of the coun­try last Thurs­day.

Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials say she could not prop­er­ly ac­count for the mon­ey.

Im­mi­gra­tion sources told Guardian Me­dia that the woman who was des­tined to Cara­cas walked through the air­port se­cu­ri­ty scan­ners and was lat­er sub­ject­ed to a body search by se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers of the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty.

It was while the woman was be­ing 'pat down' by the of­fi­cers they dis­cov­ered the mon­ey strapped to her body.

She had failed to de­clare the mon­ey.

The Piarco International Airport.

She was lat­er hand­ed over to Cus­toms of­fi­cers who al­so found in US$1500 in her hand­bag.

The woman, who is in her ear­ly 30s, claimed she was in the nail pol­ish busi­ness and told of­fi­cers she trav­elled fre­quent­ly to Trinidad.

She was lat­er hand­ed over to po­lice for ques­tion­ing.

Un­der the Cus­toms Act all ar­riv­ing and de­part­ing pas­sen­gers at the air­port or sea­ports are re­quired to de­clare to a Cus­toms of­fi­cer on du­ty whether they are car­ry­ing cash cur­ren­cy of mon­e­tary in­stru­ments in ex­cess of US$5,000 or its equiv­a­lent in any cur­ren­cy or TT$20,000.

Any­one who trav­els in ex­cess of this amount and de­clares it will then have to jus­ti­fy the funds.